This essay was originally published in June 2020 and has since been re-edited.
One of my favorites from Tame Impala is a slow pretty bass-driven number called “Yes I’m Changing”. The song, which sounds like a retrofitted 50s prom-ballad, is both an ode to personal growth and a mourning of what is lost in the process of reinvention. Here’s a snippet of the second verse:
I saw it different, I must admit
I caught a glimpse, I'm going after it
They say people never change but that's bullshit, they do
I did not like Tame Impala at first. For years their experimental sound was too different, too foreign to fit inside my preconceived box of ‘good music’, whatever that meant. It was as if the trippy rock band from Perth were only accessible to a certain caliber of musical Jedi, and without the force was I. That’s how it goes though, right? Easier on the ego to assume we won’t enjoy the things we haven’t made an effort to understand.
So what changed? A friend clued me in on the lesser known fact that the band was actually the sole creative output of one man: Kevin Parker. All instrumental and songwriting credits go to him. All of ‘em. The touring members are borrowed from the band POND (a reputable rock act in their own right, and Parker’s peers from the Perth neo-psych scene.) That a solo project of Tame Impala’s accolades would be concealed by its creator as a group seemed like a rare portrayal of humility amid the Instagram-soaked standards of celebrity culture today, and the opposite of what I expected from a globetrotting headliner.
I decided to give Mr. Parker’s music another chance on a humid day last August, wedged in a Peter Pan bus en route to Chinatown from Boston. Chilled air conditioning overruled the heat, and there was comfort in the hum of our southbound trajectory that had me drifting off in a matter of minutes to one of those half-awake, psychedelic naps.
Over the next three hours, Tame Imapala’s discography blared into my subconscious like a kaleidoscopic airstrike. For the first time, I heard how distinct the drum patterns were. They were catchy, clean, and then would shred the way guitar solos do. One song tied to the next with threads of thick bass-lines pulsing with reverb. Synth-layered melodies drifted to idle areas of my mind like technicolor parachutes landing across a grayscale sky. This was soothing, vivid music.
Parker has an ethereal, Lennon-like style of singing that pairs well with what he’s singing about. At each stage of Tame’s evolution there are songs related to the nature of time and consciousness: Desire Be Desire Go, Lucidity, Solitude Is Bliss, The Bold Arrow Of Time, Be Above It, Let It Happen, The Less I Know The Better, The Moment, Breathe Deeper, Tomorrow’s Dust. These are songs that value equanimity over ego, and I was attracted to them.
I remember emerging from my trance to a song called Half Full Glass Of Wine. The track, a fan favorite that I’m pretty sure Hendrix would’ve loved, is about the dissolution of a relationship told through the mind of a man who has ostensibly been stood-up. His only companion while he mulls over what’s next is a half full glass of wine.
Halfway into the track, the band steers into a spacey, transitory space. A vindictive bass-line thumps as the tempo of the riff kicks up. Parker builds tension like he’s charming a boa constrictor. The melody evolves louder and for three minutes charges with power before it erupts in crescendo with the rioting crowd. There’s something particularly cathartic about this segment of the song that I’m drawn to, and while I can’t grasp exactly what it is, I do have an idea.
I think the song has to do with suffering and the stories we tell ourselves. The failures and letdowns; the self-imposed limits. And it is through these emotions that Parker, like a shaman synced to a higher dimension, channels reassurance. Something cosmically distant yet unknowingly familiar. A message from another realm, reminding us not to worry. I’ve loved Tame Impala ever since I first heard it.
Tastes and preferences, I’ve learned, evolve if we let them. Sometimes the music we need the most doesn’t begin with love on first listen. There is often a courting process involving work before we’re won over. It may take going back for that third or fourth try, digging for the deeper cuts, or connecting with a verse before the payoff emerges. In the end, though, I think it’s the pursuit of understanding that matters more than anything. That’s when we find the deeper versions of ourselves.